Westport sues non-residents for tuition

Westport schools: Taking Seymour family to court, seeking tuition

Jeff Morganteen

Updated 10:47 pm, Saturday, June 16, 2012

The Westport public school district is suing a Seymour couple for allegedly falsely registering their daughter as a Westport resident so she could attend school there and wants to recoup more than $27,000 in two years of tuition.

An attorney for the school district says the couple owes the town of Westport the $27,911 in tuition from the 2010-11 and 2009-10 school years, and accuses the girl's father of fraud and statutory theft, for which the school district wants to recoup triple the amount of tuition as damages, according to the lawsuit.

The complaint accuses Christopher Kieras of falsifying a school registration card to enroll his daughter at Kings Highway Elementary School in Westport for two years and that an investigation showed she lived 40 minutes away in Seymour.

According to the lawsuit, which was filed last Tuesday at state Superior Court in Stamford, the Westport Board of Education notified Kieras that their daughter was ineligible to attend Westport public schools because they did not reside in town. Kieras and his former wife, Maria, testified during a hearing about their residency, and an officer ruled they didn't produce enough evidence to prove their residency in Westport, whose high school was cited as one of the best in the state last year by U.S. News & World Report.

Westport is among several school districts in the area exerting more scrutiny toward out-of-town parents suspected of enrolling their children in school districts using false addresses, an issue that came to a head with the arrest of a Bridgeport woman last year on larceny charges for defrauding Norwalk public schools. While most student residency cases are handled at the administrative level, Catherine S. Nietzel, a Stamford attorney representing the school board against the Kieras family, said she thinks the Westport school board will look to pursue legal action going forward.

"Nobody quarrels with wanting the best for your children, but it's not fair for people who do pay taxes and part of those taxes are used for schools," Nietzel said.

Alexander Schwartz, a Fairfield attorney representing the Kieras, was unavailable to answer questions about the lawsuit, but said in an e-mail: "The Kieras' were unfortunately not represented by an attorney during the proceedings before the Board of Education. Now that they have counsel, they hope all the facts will come out."

Nietzel said the Westport school district wants the Kieras couple to repay the costs of educating their daughter for two years. Nietzel said the school district knows of other out-of-town students violating their residency rules.

"The primary objective is simply to recoup the expenses and use those funds for the benefit of Westport residents," Nietzel said. "If it happens to have a secondary effect of deterring others, I don't think anybody would be unhappy."

Wesport school district officials did not return calls for comment. In the neighboring town of Weston, whose high school was listed above Westport in the U.S. News & Report rankings, the district hires private investigators to follow students and their parents to and from school to verify their residences. According to Weston schools Human Resources Director Lewis Brey, the investigators look to confirm whether the student sleeps in town, the standard by which residency is established.

Brey said he has seen out-of-town parents drive their students to bus stops, and has seen friends vouch for families using false addresses to register their children in the school district. Since tightening its residency verification policies this past school year, the Weston school district uncovered four cases of out-of-town students, Brey said. Some of the students left the schools after officials notified them of their findings, while other's families simply moved into the district.

Instead of asking just for utility bills, the Weston school district now requires deed or lease records, or statements from landlords. While cautioning that he did not know the veracity of the lawsuit's claims, Brey said he agrees with Westport's decision to pursue legal action against the Kieras family because of the amount of time the student was alleged to have spent in the district.

"I think that given the length of time that the student was falsely attending Westport Public Schools, that's completely appropriate," Brey said.

Kim Eves, director of communications for Greenwich Public Schools, said the district investigates more than 30 student residency cases each school year. A couple years ago, the district overhauled its process for proof-of-residency requirements and implemented a system that alerts officials to expired rental leases and when residents move out of town.

"It's a big enough issue that we have this process in place," Eves said.

The issue of student residency in Connecticut drew national attention last year with the arrest of Tayna McDowell, a Bridgeport woman who pleaded guilty to larceny charges in February for enrolling her son in the Norwalk school district based on a false address. McDowell received a five-year prison sentence for the crime, in addition to charges of selling drugs to undercover police officers. The arrest sparked debate over education inequality and access to public schools, and McDowell received support from national education advocacy groups and the NAACP.

Nietzel said the decision to pursue criminal charges in school residency cases rests with the local state attorney's office. She said the situation with the Kieras family does not share some other factors involved with McDowell's criminal case.

"That Norwalk situation, I think there was a lot more going on than just simply sending a child to a school in a town where she did not reside," Nietzel said.

Brey, also an attorney for the Weston school district, said most residency cases deal with fraudulent registration cards, and he could see school boards forwarding flagrant deceptions to law enforcement authorities in the future.

"Certainly, the school districts that are well-funded and higher performing, they are a draw and people want to send their kids there and you can't blame them," Brey said. "But at the same time, there are limited resources and they are funded by the community."